


The End of Her World

by Bow_Ties



Category: Doctor Who (2005)
Genre: Angst with a Happy Ending, F/F, First Kiss
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-04-13
Updated: 2019-04-13
Packaged: 2020-01-12 18:30:29
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,386
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18452210
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Bow_Ties/pseuds/Bow_Ties
Summary: When the Doctor is injured by a Cyberman, Yaz has to come face to face with her own feelings and the consequences that they might bring.





	The End of Her World

**Author's Note:**

> Hello everyone! This is my very first fanfic, and I was quite nervous about posting since English is not my first language. Comments are greatly appreciated :)

If the world would come to its end at this very moment, Yasmin Khan wouldn’t care. The thought didn’t even surprise her, really. She was standing next to the Doctor, hand in hand with that wonderfully mad woman with a blue box, staring right into the circular lights that shone in place of the Cyberman’s eyes. They had spent the whole day fighting, trying to keep the Cybermen from converting more people into monstrous, murderous machines. Several times the deadly blasts that shot from the Cybermen’s arms had narrowly missed them while they had jumped, run, and skidded to safety.  
Now all that was left was this one lonely Cyberman, unwilling, or perhaps unable to stand down.  
“Delete!”, came the unmistakeable, monotonous voice.  
As the Cyberman lifted its arm, death so close to her she could almost taste it, still all that Yasmin could think of was the warm hand around her own. Those soft fingers, gently holding on to her, emanating safety like a shield of light. If the world would end right now, if Yasmin’s journey found its final moment right here, standing next to the Doctor, she would not care. She had seen much more than she could have ever dreamed of, she had felt so much beauty in her heart, so much love, it would have been enough for more than one lifetime. She turned her head away from the Cyberman’s metal face and smiled at the woman next to her. Just as she was about to open her mouth to speak, everything happened all at once.  
The Cyberman steadied its arm, repeating its battle cry, at the same time that the Doctor produced her sonic. A loud screeching noise echoed through the hallway, accompanied by an electrical explosion over their heads, and with a sickening crunch, the Cyberman was pushed to the floor by the heavy portal that had crashed down onto him.  
A last energy blast erupted from its arm, ricocheting from the wall. Yasmin could see it heading straight towards her as if time had slowed down, and a fraction of a second later, she felt the Doctor’s hand pulling her back. Yasmin stumbled as the Doctor stepped in front of her, and watched in horror as the energy blast hit the other woman square in the chest. The Doctor’s eyes went wide, her mouth forming a silent “oh”. A second later, her eyes rolled back in her head.  
The Doctor fell.  
Yasmin screamed.

Everything that came next happened as though Yasmin was seeing it through thick clouds of mist. Ryan came running from the end of the hallway behind her, shouting something that she could not make out. Then he was standing in front of her, shaking her shoulders, gesturing towards the Doctor. Yaz just managed to shake her head, realising that tears were now covering her cheeks. Ryan bent down, gathering the Doctor up in his arms, and ran back towards the end of the hallway, passing a confused Graham, who paled upon seeing the lifeless Doctor in his grandson’s arms.  
It was Graham who took care of Yaz, gently guiding her down corridor upon corridor, through the maze of the ship that had brought the Cybermen to invade Earth, back to the TARDIS.

Ryan had brought the Doctor to the TARDIS’ med-bay, unsure of what to do next. When Yaz walked in, he was standing next to the Doctor’s bed, wringing his hands and looking utterly helpless. Yaz leaned to glance past him, and pain shot through her heart. The Doctor lay on the bed, hooked up to various machines that neither of them really understood, but which could hopefully help her survive. One of her arms was hanging down the side of the bed, and her head was turned towards the door, eyes still closed, her wild golden hair falling over parts of her face. She looked empty.

“I’m not sure…” Ryan started, stammering. “I can only feel one weak pulse, but she’s supposed to have two, isn’t she?”  
Yaz swallowed. “Yeah, she is.”  
She stepped closer to the Doctor, Graham following her inside the room.  
“Dear God”, she heard him utter behind her.  
Tentatively, she took the Doctor’s hand, the one that was dangling off the bed. Moments ago, those same fingers had held onto her, giving her safety and warmth. Now they felt almost cold, unable to move. Gently, Yaz took hold of the Doctor’s elbow with her other hand and laid the arm across the Doctor’s stomach. She left her right hand on top of the Doctor’s, unable to let go, staring at it as if any moment, the fingers would start twitching.

The silence in the room could have been cut with a knife, until Graham finally broke it.  
“She’s not changing.”  
Confused, both Ryan and Yaz looked up from the Doctor’s face and turned towards Graham.  
“What do you mean?”, Yaz asked, feeling something creep up in her throat that she couldn’t quite place.  
“She said… back when she made her sonic, remember? It was just me and Grace with her. She told us that she… regenerated? That instead of dying, her whole body changes, and she becomes… someone new. A whole new body, a whole new person.”  
Yaz stared.  
_Half an hour ago, I was a white haired Scotsman._  
“Gramps, you never told us about this!”  
Guilt was draped across Graham’s face, and he looked down at the floor as he spoke again.  
“Well, I suppose… a lot happened that night and at first I didn’t really believe her anyway…and after Grace… it must have slipped my mind until… well, until now.”  
“It’s ok”, Yaz spoke softly.  
She turned back towards the Doctor, still holding the woman’s hand, now scanning her body, her face, for any sign of this… change happening. But there was nothing, just the feeling of one single slow pulse underneath her fingertips, something that had never felt so entirely wrong in her whole life.

They were holding watch over the Doctor throughout the night. At some point, Graham had fallen asleep on the floor, sitting with his back against the wall. Ryan brought him to his room, then, and told Yaz that he would go to the library afterwards, again, to look for any books that could help them. They had tried that before, and come up empty handed.

Yaz was now sitting on a chair that Ryan had brought in from somewhere before, still holding the Doctor’s hand, having let go of it only to hold the cup of tea that Graham had brought in earlier. It now sat on the small table next to her, untouched and cold. Sitting there, alone and helpless, Yaz felt the tears well up inside of her again, and she tried with all her might to push them down. She felt so stupid. So, so stupid. She had felt so grand, so special travelling the world, helping the Doctor save planets, that she had stopped to really think about the consequences, all the things that could go terribly, terribly wrong.  
“I wasn’t prepared for this”, the whispered sob escaped her, leaving her without control over the tears that were now freely streaming down her cheeks.  
“I thought I had everything. The world, the universe… I had you. Right there next to me and I was willing to see it end. Doctor you should have never taken me with you. I never deserved to be on this ship with you.”  
Another sob ripped through her, and she dropped her head onto the Doctor’s hand, grasping it tight.  
“You know what I thought?”, she whispered, “before the blast? I thought that I wouldn’t care if it all ended there for me. Because I have seen so much, you know? You have shown me so many things. God, I thought I was ready to see my world fall, I felt so full and happy with you there, like I had done everything I could have possibly done and more. But then I saw the look on your face… after the blast… and I realised that my world falling wouldn’t mean my end. It would mean yours. I saw my world fall right in front of my eyes and I couldn’t catch you.”  
By now Yaz had lifted her head, and pushed the chair back so she could stand up to look at the Doctor’s face again, sudden anger coursing through her veins. “Who was I to think… who did I think…” her voice grew louder, but Yaz didn’t care anymore, she felt the white hot anger - at herself, at the Doctor for choosing Yasmin’s life over her own - burning her blood, and her fingernails digging into the palm of her own hand.  
“My life means nothing in the face of yours! Nothing!”, she raised the fist over her head “Do you hear me? NOTHING!”  
And with that, her fist came crashing down on the Doctor’s chest.  
As soon as the contact was made, Yaz heard two gasps.  
One was her own, filled with horror at the sudden violent outburst.  
The other one came from the woman in front of her, as she shot upright, eyes wide open, coughing and spitting, trying to regain control over her breathing.

“Oi!” The Doctor finally managed to cough out, holding a hand up to her chest, “What was that for?”

Yaz had stumbled backwards after hitting the Doctor’s chest, both hands covering her mouth, but now all she could do was stare, unable to move an inch. She heard the sound of something hitting the floor in the corridor behind the door, and when she heard Ryan’s voice shouting something, she realised that he must have dropped the books he would have been carrying back from the TARDIS library.  
“Doctor?”, he panted, storming in and coming to a skidding halt next to Yaz, his whole face lighting up at the sight in front of him “Doctor!”  
He immediately turned back around, running out of the med-bay, shouting “Graham!” down the hallway.  
The Doctor awkwardly stretched her arms, rolled her shoulders and her head and proceeded to swing her legs off the bed, immediately gripping the edge and screwing her eyes shut, obviously trying to get rid of dizziness.  
This finally made Yaz jump into action. She rushed to the Doctor’s side, holding her shoulders.  
“Not so fast, Doctor. You should probably lie back down.”  
“Lying down? No, never liked that. Not going to start doing it now.”  
The Doctor was stubborn as a child and Yaz could have kissed her in that moment.  
She immediately blushed at the thought. These feelings had gotten her into this mess in the first place, and she was determined not to let them grab a hold of her again.  
By the time Graham and Ryan came hurrying back through the door, the Doctor was standing on her feet, holding on to Yaz. Ryan almost knocked her over again while giving her a hug, and Yaz swore she saw tears in Graham’s eyes as he welcomed the Doctor back.  
It took some convincing, but after the Doctor almost dropped to the floor again while trying to walk on her own, she finally agreed to let herself be taken to her room to rest some more. She insisted on getting the TARDIS safely into orbit first, and had them floating over Uranus in no time. “Should be safe, still about a hundred years till the Ninja Slugs take control”, she mumbled, and finally turned towards her room. Yaz was the one to take her there, and after a moment of wonder when she saw that the ceiling of the Doctor’s room seemed to be made up of a thousand stars shining in the distance, she tucked the woman in under her TARDIS blue covers. As soon as the Doctor’s head hit the pillow, her eyes fluttered shut, and Yaz leaned over her, just to make sure she could hear the regular breathing. Trying not to fall over any of the hundreds of things that were haphazardly strewn across the floor of the Doctor’s room like paint on the canvas of a Jackson Pollock painting, she carefully made her way back to the door.  
As she closed it behind her, she caught one more glimpse of the woman’s face.  
_My world_ , was all she could think, and she cursed herself for it.

Hours after Ryan and Graham had gone back to their rooms to sleep, Yaz found herself wandering through the console room. She had not been able to find rest, not after what had happened. When she had tried to sleep, images of that terrible blast hitting the Doctor had haunted her, and she had quickly scrambled out of bed and left her room.  
She found herself walking towards the TARDIS doors, and opened them to the magnificent sight of the planet underneath her. Uranus shone in a light, icy blue, almost like crystal, surrounded by its rings. Yaz counted fifteen, but was sure she had learned a different number back in school. She smiled. She could count this among the many things she had learned thanks to the Doctor.

Yaz sat down carefully, holding on to the door, and decided to cross her legs underneath her, not yet feeling confident enough to just let them dangle out into nothingness like she had sometimes seen the Doctor do.  
Even with this incredible sight right in front of her, Yaz was unable to chase the day’s events from her mind, and she was sure that they would stay with her for a long time to come. She closed her eyes and felt it again, the Doctor’s hand holding hers, then suddenly pulling her back. She still couldn’t understand why the woman had chosen Yasmin’s small, insignificant life over her own in that moment. Yasmin’s life meant nothing to the universe, the Doctor’s, however, could mean everything. There where whole planets out there waiting to be saved by her. Yasmin sighed, keeping her eyes closed, now seeing the Doctor on Ranskoor av Kolos nodding after Yaz had said she’d be with her, whatever happened. That was the moment she had realised, really, how much the woman meant to her. Sure, there had been situations before where she should have known what the warmth in her chest, the fluttering in her stomach and the wide uncontrollable smiles on her own face were telling her. But that day, when she had heard herself speak those words, she herself had finally understood what she really meant by them.

“You know, a whole universe would weep your absence.”

Yaz’ head shot up, her eyes flying open, and for a moment she was so disoriented by the sight of the ice giant in front of her that she thought she was going to fall right out towards it. But then, a gentle hand laid itself on her shoulder, instantly calming her down.  
“Didn’t mean to startle you”, came the Doctor’s soft spoken words from behind her.  
“S’alright”, Yaz mumbled.  
She felt, more than saw, the Doctor slowly lowering herself down next to her. For whatever reason, Yasmin couldn’t bring herself to look at the woman’s face. When she realised the Doctor was letting her legs dangle out of the TARDIS, swinging them like a child on a chair too big for her still, she felt a smile creep up on her face in spite of herself.

For a long time, that was how the two women remained. Sitting next to each other, looking out at the planet underneath them, neither of them speaking a word. At some point, the Doctor’s hand had found its way on top of Yaz’, but she was too weak to remove it from underneath. It felt too good to have that warmth again, that safety, even though she knew she wanted it to mean so much more - so many things that she could never have.

Again, it was the Doctor who broke the silence.

“I was scared I’d have to see you go, just like the others. I couldn’t bear it. I’m sorry I frightened you.”

_Frightened me!_ , Yaz thought, _You have no idea!_ She wanted to shout but somehow managed to stay quiet, remembering her earlier outburst and still scolding herself for it.

“I have lost so many people, Yaz. Countless faces that are gone forever. I see them at night sometimes, you know. When I’m alone, and I try to keep myself busy with all sorts of things, but sometimes it just doesn’t work. Yaz, I… I can’t have you become one of those faces. And I can’t ever have you believe that it would mean nothing if you did.”

Yaz went rigid, feeling as if someone had poured ice into her veins. _She had heard?_

The Doctor lifted Yaz’ hand up to hold it in both of her own, finally turning to look at her. Yaz, however, could still not bring herself to do the same.

“Yasmin Khan… I said we can’t have a universe with no Yaz. I lied. _I_ can’t have a universe with no Yaz.”

As Yasmin finally turned her head, she saw such earnestness in the Doctor’s eyes, such sorrow, hundreds of years of love and such painful loss and somehow an infinite kindness despite it all. And behind it, buried deep, was a fear, like the one of a child, who knows everything yet nothing at all.

“If you want to leave the TARDIS”, the Doctor said, now dropping her gaze and letting go of Yaz’ hand to fiddle nervously with her coat, “I’d understand.”

“Why would I want that?” Yaz blurted out, and the Doctor’s eyes shot up, wide.

“Well, the way I feel… it could make things complicated.” Her hands had left her coat to gesture in the air now “I don’t want you to feel awkward, or, or…pressured in any way, I -”

With that, Yaz grabbed the Doctor’s hands and slowly brought them down between them. Her brain was trying to catch up with what the Doctor was saying, trying to make sure she really understood. Her eyes searched the Doctor’s face, and finally came to rest on the woman’s lips.

The Doctor grew quiet then, as she looked back up at her, a slight pink tainting her cheeks when she realised the other woman’s intent gaze. Yaz could feel the rush of her own blood, like waves beating into her ears, and her heart grew so full she was sure it should no longer fit into her chest.

Yaz wasn’t sure who had moved first, but the next thing she knew, they were so close that her breath was ghosting over the Doctor’s lips. She heard the Doctor’s breath hitch, and then, before she could think anything else, the woman’s hand was in her hair, and she was pulled down, the Doctor’s lips pressing against her own. Yaz was so stunned that it took her a moment to react, but before the Doctor could pull away, she was kissing her back.

Yaz had kissed before, but never had it felt like this. Planets could die and stars be born around them in this very instant, and she would not even notice. All she could feel was the incredible softness of the Doctor’s lips against her own, and the impression that every single nerve in her body was on fire while her heart was beating out a rhythm she had never heard before.

She brought her hands up under the Doctor’s coat, to her hips, feeling the soft material of her shirt underneath her palms, while the Doctor’s hand was still tangled up in Yaz’ hair, pulling her impossibly closer.

When they finally pulled apart, both a little breathless, the Doctor brought her other hand up to softly cup Yaz’ face in both of her palms. When the Doctor opened her eyes, something new shone in them, something that Yaz had never seen before. It filled her with an incredible, peaceful warmth.

The Doctor sighed, and closed her eyes again. Slowly, she leaned forward to let their foreheads rest against each other, and they stayed like this for what felt like an eternity, until through the sound of stars shining all around them the Doctor whispered two words.

“My world.”

**Author's Note:**

> Thanks for reading :)  
> If you want, come scream at me on Tumblr @fuxdeiflswued


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